Memory Keepers
by mithrilxmoon
Summary: It was no secret the kind of memories he kept close to his heart. Caspian/Peter. Note: MOVIE-VERSE.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Not mine, not profiting, etc.

A/N: Forgive me if I've made a mess of the canon. It's been a while since I've read the books... *hangs head* Again, note, this is movieverse.

**Memory Keepers 1/2**

Some days he felt far too old to be sitting among 22-year-olds with pens between their teeth and ink smears on their fingertips. When leafing through pages of history and mathematics, he often found himself flexing his right hand, curling aching fingers around the illusion of a beloved sword. Some days he would just stare at his hands and wonder at how untouched they looked but how worn they felt. Hands that had dealt out life and death, and wielded war and peace, now looked like those of a boy who rarely ventured outside of the walls of his university.

His siblings knew what he saw whenever he turned to the nearest window, eyes fixed unconsciously on a single point, shoulders and back losing the tension they always carried. More specifically, _what_ was a _where_ and a _whom_ inextricably bound up as one and the same.

_In Narnia, everything was sweeter and brighter, free from the damp London gloom he had almost learned to accept. Even the sea tingled with a fervor on his skin and tongue._

"Peter?" That day, it was Lucy's voice that drew him away from thoughts of a second, better world. "Do you think heaven is at all like Narnia?"

"I don't know, Lu," he replied after a moment's pause. Times like these reminded him of just how alike they were.

"Would it be wrong to hope that it is?"

"It's never wrong to hope." It was hope that helped him to breathe deeply, and kept the memories clear and close to his heart.

_He was cleaning Rhindon when he heard Caspian's voice behind him, soft and curiously unfamiliar, perhaps because it had lost the steel-edged accusation of moments ago._

"_I would like to apologize for how I spoke earlier. It was wrong of me to doubt you." Caspian's dark eyes held no pretense, only humility and regret._

"_And I was wrong to blame you. I would've done the same in your position." It was only after Peter spoke that he realized his anger had gone and, with it, his resentment towards an inexperienced prince who would become king in his stead. And suddenly, he no longer felt the childish, temperamental pull of his other, already half-forgotten existence. _

_They stood unmoving for a long moment, as if adjusting to a change in the air, a shift in the space between their bodies that made Peter's limbs looser and skin warmer. Then Caspian's eyes slide to Rhindon and he asked, almost shyly, "May I?" as his right hand rose tentatively._

_Peter nodded and watched Caspian's fingers touch down reverently on the blade and carefully, gently trace the engraving in a manner so intimate that he felt warmth spreading thickly through his chest. His eyes traveled over those fingers- long, elegant curves- and nearly fluttered shut when they finally went still, achingly close to his own hand that gripped Rhindon's hilt. _

"_It's beautiful." Caspian's eyes were filled with a glorious darkness that swallowed Peter's heart._

When Edmund came back from his third and final journey, they sat in silence, neither knowing where to start or if they should speak of it at all. Peter gripped his thighs until his hands went numb and he couldn't stand it any longer.

"How is he?" The question itself was unassuming but his voice strained urgently, fearfully against the decay of year-old memories.

"He's well, and unchanged for the most part." Edmund spoke slowly, as if he wasn't sure how much to tell. "Not as hot-headed as he once was but still stubborn as hell."

At those words, Peter could almost imagine Caspian standing before him and he smiled even as the ache thudded straight into his bones and became too much to bear.

"He hasn't married," Edmund added, like an afterthought that might have been better off unsaid.

It was a double-edged truth that was at once soothing and accusing. King Caspian X needed an heir and Peter understood this, perhaps better than any of his siblings. But _he_ needed Caspian, just Caspian, to remember as painfully and deeply as he, selfish as it was. Still, Edmund did not judge or try to understand and for that Peter was grateful. Sometimes, he felt that his little brother was far wiser than he.

"He remembers. I can tell from his eyes he remembers every day." The certainty in Edmund's voice was enough to undo him completely.

_In passion, Caspian's pupils disappeared entirely into the inky rings of his irises. During those times, Peter saw Caspian through the blur of heat and lust as an otherworldly being whose beauty terrified and moved him beyond the edges of everything he knew. Caspian would call out his name as they arched against each other. Peter, just Peter, as fingernails carved into slick skin and bodies swayed towards that coveted moment of oblivion. It was when time fell away and only they were left, aware of each other and nothing else. _

_Afterward, as Peter's eyes fell shut under a warm, foreign heaviness, their fingers would tangle loosely. Only when he returned to London did he understand that heaviness and give it a name. Something like love but denser and more tragic than he'd ever seen it._

Susan adjusted to London the quickest and Peter wondered how her heart managed to travel so far from Narnia.

"If you were given the chance to go back, would you?" Peter asked one afternoon, overcome with the urge to return to Professor Kirke's wardrobe one more time.

"I don't know." Unlike Edmund, Susan tried to understand but never could. "I don't think I would. I've gotten used to London. I _like _it here." Her eyes searched his face and whatever they found made her frown in disapproval. "_This_ is your life now, Peter. Narnia was just a wonderful fairy tale that couldn't last forever."

"This is my life now," Peter echoed with a caricature of a smile. "You're right, Susan. It's just difficult to remember sometimes."

Yet these were the times when he found it easy to remember why they were never close.

_It was the night before his return to London and Peter stood by Caspian in the garden, submerged in a sorrow deeper and darker than he'd ever felt it. _

"_Will you see the same moon in London?" Caspian's voice was thick with everything he couldn't bear to say, starting with goodbye._

_Peter took breaths that sounded loud and broken to his ears. "Does it matter?"_

"_Maybe not, but it is comforting to think so." Caspian turned to look at him, face shadowed but still more beautiful than any memory Peter could try to keep of it._

_For the first time, Caspian's sentimentality struck a sharp, ugly chord in Peter's chest. He didn't want to be comforted. It was the illusion of security but never the certainty, a certain contentment that quieted loneliness but never cured it. And in that moment, he lost his grip on everything he was supposed to hope for._

"_Promise me that you'll forget." His hands and jaw clenched against the compulsion to touch one last time._

"_Promise me that you will not." Caspian was neither defiant nor stubborn, only pleading. He raised his hand but stopped it mid-reach, perhaps afraid that Peter was already a loose fragment of his imagination. _

_Peter turned away from the voice that too often made joy and madness indistinguishable. "I cannot," he replied, not really knowing if he meant that he could not promise or that he could not forget. _

_However Caspian comprehended it made him smile wistfully and close his eyes. "Nor can I."_

When Peter opened his eyes to the feeling of Narnia for the last time, he smiled knowing that he would never again return to London. Then he laughed, knowing that he would never again be too old to hold on tightly to what he loved.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Not mine, not profiting, etc.

**Memory Keepers 2/2**

He was born and bred to understand duty and what it encompassed: his people, his country, everything but him. The moment he became king, he learned that whatever Caspian wanted fell gracelessly into irrelevance. That is, Caspian the boy, whose hand still trembled around the hilt of his sword and whose heart still raced towards the unattainable. Caspian the king, tenth in his line, lived in responsibilities, never in dreams.

Still, there were moments when he slipped and the two realities collided at the point of a memory.

_The High King of Narnia was exactly what he had expected and not at all. His stance, head held high and shoulders straight, spoke of power and nobility. Yet his smooth cheeks and slender limbs were the innocence of a boy, hardly older than Caspian. A snide comment darted through his lips as he turned away from Reepicheep and Caspian couldn't help responding in kind. _

"_Well then, you will probably be wanting yours back." He had not given in to petulance for quite some time, but something about the way Peter's mouth curved dug its way into his chest._

_He raised the hand that gripped the legendary sword; its weight pressed sweetly into his palm. Peter snatched it back with a dangerously contained defiance that heated his irises to a startling, nameless blue. Caspian suddenly and inexplicably wondered what color they were in laughter. _

Although none could call Caspian a suspicious man, he confided in few and entrusted his life with fewer still.

"My king, tell me what's on your mind." Trumpkin's deep voice rumbled through Caspian's heavy thoughts. "You can trust me you know."

Caspian smiled lightly and turned his head away from the window to Trumpkin, who observed him with shrewd eyes. "I trust you with my life."

The dwarf grunted and dismissed the words with a wave of his hand, although Caspian suspected he was flattered.

"Are you concerned about me?" Caspian couldn't help teasing his friend a little. Trumpkin scrupulously maintained his reputation as a rough-edged curmudgeon, but Caspian knew he was capable of caring deeply for others.

"I'm obligated," Trumpkin replied gruffly. "Now, enlighten me."

Caspian turned back to the window and chewed at his bottom lip in a manner unfit for a king before replying.

"How easily do you think one could visit another world?"

A raised eyebrow was the only indication that Trumpkin heard the question. Caspian searched his face for a subtler reaction and found the slightest narrowing of blue eyes, as if Trumpkin were weighing the difference between the answer Caspian believed to be true and the answer he hoped to be true.

"From what I've seen, it's not for any one creature to decide. The Kings and Queens of old could because they were meant to bring about the Golden Age. The Telmarines could... perhaps because you were meant to be king."

Trumpkin spoke more softly than usual, as if it would make honesty sound less certain. Still, Caspian felt a thick, unforgiving pressure coil around his heart until he could distinguish hope from reality all too clearly. He heard the uneven edges of a deep breath around an afterthought of thin comfort that he couldn't bring himself to resent.

"But perhaps, those other worlds aren't nearly as far away as we might think."

Caspian imagined the edges of Narnia and beyond them, a foreign place that spoke his name in a familiar voice.

_That day Peter sat beside him on the rocks, hair ruffling in the wind and eyes reflecting a pale blue day. When they were not busy quarreling like children, they enjoyed each other's company. Caspian found that he felt freer around Peter; he fought with less restraint and conversed with more ease, although he couldn't say why._

"_Do you miss home?" Peter kept his eyes on the horizon. _

_Caspian thought of cold walls that echoed loneliness instead of laughter. "It stopped being home when my father died."_

_Peter shifted his weight and tightened his lips before saying, "I'm sorry."_

"_Do you miss yours?" Caspian asked quickly to evade the subject of a past he no longer wished to recall._

"_No," Peter replied a little ruefully but without hesitation, "I can't think of it as home, no matter how hard I try." _

_Likewise, Caspian could not imagine that Peter might belong somewhere else. And he realized, quite against his will, that there was a part of Peter—one unthinkably foreign part—he could never know. Peter went on, oblivious to the frightening weight that had settled unexpectedly onto Caspian's heart. _

"_When I went back, the last time, I saw people and places that might have mattered a long time ago, but not anymore. Even after weeks and months, I felt… like I was a grown-up trying too hard to remember his childhood."_

_As a strange sort of consolation in that moment, Caspian saw fully the man Peter had become in Narnia, now weighed down by a sorrow borne out of inevitable loss and tempered by fragile acceptance. _

"_Do you consider Narnia your home then?" _

"_I thought I did. It certainly feels the same. But, when I really look around, I realize that it's almost like being in London. More beautiful of course, but the same struggle to remember. I suppose that's what happens when you move one way and your world moves another." _

_When Peter finally turned to look at Caspian, his eyes were not those of a grieving king, but of a lost boy. _

He looked out from the bow of the_ Dawn Treader_ to the darkening horizon and anticipated the night, when the sea would become nearly indistinguishable from the sky. Night was when the immensity of the world overwhelmed him and evoked, at once, a certain glory and a certain despair. When the last hues of sun finally disappeared, he found that the final night of his voyage was no exception.

"Prolonged contemplation can be a dangerous thing, my liege. It may or may not enlighten the mind but it will surely torment the soul." Edmund's voice was soft but traveled surely on the wind.

Caspian turned around and saw solemn eyes that belied a playful smile. "Then let conversation be the cure," he replied good-naturedly although he knew which subject Edmund wished to broach.

They stood side by side in silence as Caspian waited stubbornly for Edmund to speak first.

"Perhaps I misspoke, and time rather than contemplation is the danger."

"Yes, that I cannot deny," Caspian said quietly as a coldness, apart from the chill of the sea, overtook him.

"I suppose there are some things you can't forget. But sometimes, you have to remember the past without living in it." Edmund kept his eyes fixed on a point in the darkness and Caspian couldn't help thinking that, despite appearances, he and his brother were painfully alike.

"For better or for worse," Caspian whispered through the growing tightness in his throat.

Edmund turned to him then and said, with the kind of sadness that allowed for a smile, "I like to think that no tragedy lasts forever. Then I can remind myself that one lifetime isn't such a long time to wait."

"No, it is not," Caspian agreed. What he could not say was that he did not lack patience, only the strength to face the one kingly duty he had not fulfilled. He could not yet bring himself to forfeit his heart for an heir and make marriage a means to an end. Not for the first time, he imagined that his sentimentality would be his downfall.

_Caspian liked to lick his way into Peter's mouth, catching teeth and tongue, as they swallowed each other's groans. He reveled in the feeling of Peter's fingers catching his hips and jerking so that their bodies met with perfect timing. The last night was no different, just slower and more cautious as if they were bracing themselves for the collision that would send them hurtling in opposite directions. _

"_Caspian." Peter's voice sounded younger and less certain than he'd ever heard it. "What I asked of you before, I--"_

"_It doesn't matter." Caspian shook his head and laid an unsteady hand on Peter's chest. Their hearts beat to the same melancholic rhythm. "For once, let us not think of the future." _

_He knew how impossible that sounded. Still, he closed his eyes and thought of a happiness free from the order of the world. An order that saw fit to join lives and then break them apart again without regard for the wreckage that would remain. Anger ran furiously in his blood and he quickly opened his eyes for fear of losing himself. _

"_What do you think happiness really is, Peter?" He felt that after this night, he would no longer be able to live with sentimentality. _

_Peter studied his face for a moment with eyes that carried his entire world. "Knowing you've found something you can bear to lose because, if only for that short while, you were not alone. I, for one, am happy knowing that."_

_Caspian always knew that Peter was the stronger one._

For the second and final time in his life, he found himself at the bow of a ship, marveling at the night. He felt freer and happier with his skin damp from salt water and tight from anticipation. Most knew that he was seeking Aslan, but few knew that he was seeking something else entirely. Something that called to him as death did, from a far better place that lay just past the edge of the world.


End file.
